


he's got you high and you don't even know yet

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post 3x22, Unbelievable Fluff, half way through writing i realised i've already written something really similar before, so - consider this an upgrade, the greatest of all cliches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 23:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7127522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you know what else makes me happy, Fitz? Sex. With you. Sex with you makes me very happy. Because I really, really, really, love having sex with you, Fitz."</p>
<p>In which Jemma has her tonsils out and Fitz experiences the effects of high quality pain medication.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he's got you high and you don't even know yet

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a week ago on my phone while driving to Newcastle and it didn't turn out that bad so I decided to upload it properly! This fits into a wider AU verse of mine set after the season three finale where Fitz and Jemma go deep undercover to keep an eye on Radcliffe, a universe I may or may not get around to expanding at some point.
> 
> The title comes from Mumm-ra's song She's Got You High. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr @jeemmasimmons.

 

 

It starts with a sore throat, one that lasts for three days and makes Jemma wince every time she has to swallow.

Then, she develops an earache so acute that it has her reaching for the paracetamol every four hours like clockwork, and when she rolls over against Fitz in the middle of the night he can feel how hot her forehead is, pressed against his neck.

But she’s Jemma Simmons, and she stitched up her own wound on an alien planet with no anaesthetic without blinking an eye, and so the next morning she kisses his cheek without a word and walks out the door to go to work.

It is only when Fitz opens the door to their apartment that evening to find her sitting on their kitchen island with a thermometer in her ear (and her compact mirror expertly angled so she can look at her tonsils) that he puts his foot down.

He drives them both up to the local hospital first thing in the morning and holds her hand as the doctor tells them that prolonged tonsillitis warranted tonsil removal, and furthermore that they could take them out for her that very afternoon.

‘It’s a very simple procedure, Fitz,’ Jemma croaks at him, carefully examining his fingernails as the doctor takes a sample of blood from the crook of her elbow. ‘Humans have been performing tonsillectomies for over two thousand years, so we’re really very well versed in it by now. It’ll take three quarters of an hour, tops.’

The doctor nods along with her, while smiling agreeably at him. ‘And she won’t feel a thing,’ she reassures him. ‘We’ll keep her nicely medicated and when she wakes up you can feed her ice cream to your heart’s content.’

Fitz nods back, staring at the small vial of blood she pulled from Jemma’s arm and wonders whether or not he should remind the two women insistent on informing him about the technicalities of a tonsillectomy that he’d had one of his own when he was six years old and knows everything they are trying to tell him anyway.

He decides not to, in the end, when Jemma catches his eye and gives him a smile, the kind that has a habit of leaving him breathless.

 

 

‘You can go back to work,’ Jemma says, as she wriggles out of her jeans behind the curtain drawn around her cubicle for privacy. ‘I know you’ve got a lot to do. If you wanted to get back to the lab, I wouldn’t mind, I…oh, _Fitz_ , you can open your eyes…’

‘I couldn’t go back to the lab, actually.’ Despite the invitation, Fitz nobly keeps his eyes closed. When he hears Jemma unclasp her bra, he holds out the hospital issue gown for her to change into, receiving the discarded bra in return. ‘Radcliffe’s already given me today and tomorrow off, I rang him earlier to ask. He said to say that he hopes you feel better soon, by the way.’

He hears Jemma’s disparaging snort in response, and when she taps him lightly on the shoulder to ask him to tie her gown up at the back for her, he opens his eyes.

 

 

‘You don’t have to stay, you know,’ she tells him in a small voice, as they sit side by side waiting for the doctor to come back and take her down for the surgery. ‘It’s just tonsillitis.’

Fitz looks at her, and sees the faint, red scars still lingering on her skin and the freckles that he presses kisses to every night before they go to sleep smattered across her nose. He smiles, at how simple the pleasure of knowing every inch of her skin is.

‘I know.’

 

 

‘You don’t have to stay,’ she repeats, once he is walking alongside her gurney on the way down to the operating theatre. ‘It’s just me.’

They reach the theatre doors, and Fitz knows that he can’t go any further with her. He reaches down and takes her hand in his, marvelling at how soft her skin is, like rose petals on a spring morning. He lifts her hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it, softly.

‘Trust me, Jemma,’ he says. ‘It’s never, ever been _just_ you.’

 

 

Fitz finds that, when nobody is in moral peril at death’s door, hospitals are not unpleasant places to be.

He drifts down to the cafeteria and orders a plate of macaroni cheese, with a cheese burger on the side. Jemma had been nil by mouth since eight o’clock that morning and so he had been too, in mournful sympathy, but now it is three in the afternoon and he is starving.

After eating, he wanders outside into a little courtyard garden and sits on a bench, twisting a bay leaf in his hands and watching as a small wren hops around by his feet.

The past two months since they’d left SHIELD had been long, and for the most part tiring, but there are parts to his and Jemma’s new life that Fitz is starting to love. He loves seeing his toothbrush sit next to hers in their shared bathroom, loves going in for a shower after her to smell her soap in the air. He loves the evenings when he leans on the kitchen counter as she cooks, watching her stir and cracks eggs and spill cheese sauce down her front. He loves waking up to her presenting him with a cup of tea and a sunny smile, and he loves how she always stands on her tiptoes to kiss him before they leave for work; he to Radcliffe’s laboratory, her to the university in the centre of the city.

He is starting, he realises, not to be afraid when that happens. He is starting not to be afraid once she is out of his sight, starting to feel safe in the knowledge that soon they’ll both be home again. The exuberance with which Jemma kisses him every night lets him know that she is feeling the exact same way.

It feels, Fitz thinks, like they are both learning to breathe again.

Eventually though, his palms begin to itch and the persistent jiggling of his knee starts to make his joints ache and so he gets up to make his way back to the waiting room. Fitz had only been there for a few minutes, listlessly flicking through a week old newspaper, when Jemma’s doctor comes to find him, to tell him that she is out of surgery and in recovery.

‘Do you want to be there when she wakes up?’

He is already on his feet before she can finish the sentence.

Jemma’s room is small and private, the space taken up mostly by the bed she is lying in, fast asleep still, and a chair by the window next to the bed. Fitz sinks into it, and takes a moment to observe her.

Jemma looks younger in sleep, with all the lines on her face smoothed out. She looks peaceful too and just as beautiful as she always is, the only evidence of her surgery a slight redness around her mouth and a drip in her hand in the exact same place he had kissed just hours before.

Letting out a slight huff of breath, Fitz settles back into his chair and waits.

It only feels like seconds before Jemma’s eyelids start to flutter, although it is probably a lot longer, and he sits forward eagerly just as she blinks her eyes open. Almost instantly, she focuses in on him and Fitz watches as her entire face lights up.

‘Fitz,’ she croaks.

Fitz’s chest swells with relief and he grins, leaning over her to brush a loose strand of hair off of her face tenderly. ‘Hey. How are you feeling?’

‘Wonderful.’ Jemma smiles, tilting her head on the pillow as she looks up at him. ‘Absolutely wonderful.’

‘Really?’ Fitz frowns, eyeing the redness around her mouth and slightly glassy look in her eyes warily. ‘Your throat feels alright?’

‘Hmm? Oh, no. Hurts horribly, really.’ Before he can react to this, Jemma sighs and reaches her hands upwards to cup his cheeks. ‘You really are wonderful, Fitz.’

Fitz starts a little, more at the unexpectedness of the proclamation than of the words themselves. ‘Uh, thanks, Jemma…’

‘I mean it, Fitz.’ Her words begin to slur together as she rushes into her next thought without finishing her last. ‘You are truly wonderful. And not just your physique either, although that is outstanding. Your head is wonderful too, and your heard, and your brain, oh, and your _hands_ …’

‘Jemma,’ Fitz interrupts her, feeling the back of his neck start to heat up, ‘I’m going to call the nurse, okay?’

‘Hmm,’ she hums in acknowledgement as he reaches over her to push the nurse’s call button.

On his way back to sit down next to her, she grabs his hands and turns them over in her own. Fitz watches as Jemma’s lips stretch into a lazy smile as she rubs her thumbs over his palms, a look of pure serenity falling over her face.

‘I really do love your hands, Fitz…’

‘They, uh, really love you too,’ he tells her, sitting down gingerly on the edge of her bed.

‘I love watching them,’ Jemma confesses, unfurling her fingers so they are pressed up against his own, but significantly shorter. ‘I love watching them when you’re working and they move so fast I can’t keep track of what they’re doing. I love watching them when you’re trying to explain something, and you hold them out to the sides like you’re trying to make yourself look bigger.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Jemma whispers, and Fitz carefully folds his fingers down to trap hers between them, so they are twined together like a double helix. ‘It makes me happy to watch your hands. And it makes me happy when you touch me with them too. I like it when you hold me in your hands.’

Inside his chest, Fitz can feel his heart thump, and it feels like it is swelling to twice its normal size. He can’t help but smile at her, a warm glow spreading through his body as he grins.

‘Do you?’

Jemma nods against the pillow. ‘I do,’ she says softly, and Fitz wants to kiss her right then and there. ‘It makes me very happy, you know.’

Gently, he squeezes their joined hands. ‘It makes me pretty happy too.’

‘Do you know what else makes me happy, Fitz?’

‘No.’ He can’t stop smiling now, bobbing down to press a kiss to the top of her knuckles. ‘What else?’

‘Sex.’

Fitz just about chokes on his own tongue. He splutters, just managing to keep from dropping their joint hands in his surprise.

‘What did you…wh-‘

‘With you. Sex with you makes me very happy. Because I really, really, really, love having sex with you, Fitz.’

He can only stare at her, opening and closing his mouth like a startled fish as he tries to formulate an appropriate response to that and comes up completely blank. Luckily, the door behind him opens and Fitz turns in relief to see Jemma’s nurse enter the room.

‘Hello there,’ he says cheerily, lifting the hand not holding Jemma’s chart to the two of them in greeting. ‘How are we doing in here?’

‘Hello,’ Fitz mumbles, hoping his face isn’t as red as it feels, ‘we’re fine, thanks.’

‘We have sex,’ Jemma pipes up from the bed.

‘Hey now,’ the nurse says mildly, as he reaches over to check her vitals and Fitz feels his cheeks flame again. ‘Isn’t that nice?’

‘It’s very, very good.’

‘I’m pleased for you both.’ He peers down her throat with a small torch and adjusts the drip in her hand before straightening up to give them both a smile. ‘Well, it looks like everything is just as it should be, Miss Simmons. I’ll come back to check up on you in about an hour, if that’s alright.’

‘We kiss too,’ Jemma mumbles, as she nods at him. ‘Lots and lots of kissing.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

The nurse gives her a little wink and makes to leave the room. Quickly, Fitz detaches his fingers from Jemma’s, practically having to peel her off of him, and clambers around the edge of the bed, stubbing his toe in his eagerness to catch the nurse before he leaves.

‘Is she really…um…’

‘She’s fine,’ Jemma’s nurse reassures him. ‘The surgery went without a hitch, but we’ll keep her in overnight for observation. Hopefully, we’ll be able to send her home with you tomorrow morning.’

Fitz nods; even though he’d known this already, to hear someone else say it is reassuring. ‘Thanks. But I was just wondering…’ He hesitates, and the nurse raises one eyebrow at him. ‘I know that she’s alright, but why…why is she…’

He trails off when he notices that Jemma is still holding her hand upright where he had left it, her fingers still splayed as if she is waiting patiently for him to come back and thread his own through hers again. The sight of it is enough to knock the words he had been about to say right out of his mouth.

‘It’s an aftereffect of the anaesthetic,’ the nurse says, and when Fitz turns back to look at him he sees a knowing twinkle in his eyes. ‘Different people react to it in different ways. Most people just get very drowsy. But some…well, for some, it breaks down their walls. They start to talk, about whatever the first thing they think about is.’ He glances up at Fitz over his clipboard. ‘And usually, that thing is what’s most important to them.’

Fitz swallows, glancing back to where Jemma is still holding up her hand, her fingers starting to blindly brush the air in search of him, unsure of quite what to say.

Jemma’s nurse seems to understand, and gives him a friendly pat on the back. ‘If I were you, I’d savour it while I can,’ he says cheerfully. ‘When she wakes up again, she probably won’t even remember that this happened.’

He leaves, closing the door quietly behind him. Fitz makes his way back to his chair, reaching out to take Jemma’s hand as he does so, and her little sigh of contentment when he does makes his heart ache.

Once he’s sat back down, Jemma’s face against the pillow lightens and she smiles, pushing back her blanket and making to get out of the bed. Alarmed, Fitz sits forward.

‘Jemma, shouldn’t you-‘

Either she doesn’t hear him or she does but doesn’t want to listen, because she uses their held hands as leverage to push herself out of bed and towards him. She sits down heavily in his lap and Fitz brings his free hand up to her waist to steady her, balancing her on his knees as she loops her arm around his neck, bringing their heads closer together.

He breathes in the warm, lavender scent of her soap, buried underneath the sharper hospital smell, feeling the prickle of her hair on his face and the comfortable weight of her underneath his hands.

Jemma sighs again, and lifts her head up to press a kiss to the top of his jawline where it meets his cheekbones, before moving her lips downwards in a lazy trail of kisses that stops just at the corner of his mouth.

‘Thank you,’ she whispers, ‘for staying with me.’

Fitz closes his eyes, and tilts his head to the side so that their lips brush, so that they are sharing a breath again. He finds himself wondering how it is possible that somebody who has gone through so much can still feel so soft underneath his touch.

‘S’alright.’

‘I didn’t want you to go.’ He hears the quiver in her voice and opens his eyes again to see hers shining with tears as she looks at him. ‘Even though I said you could, I never wanted you to leave. I don’t know why I said that.’

The way she says it makes his heart clench and, overwhelmed with the desire to halt her tears before they could fall, Fitz adjusts her position on his lap so that their faces are almost completely parallel so he can rub his nose over hers, gently.

‘It’s okay,’ he whispers. ‘I do.’

‘Why did I say it, Fitz?’

‘Because,’ he tells her, ‘you’d rather everybody else did what they wanted to do, rather than what you need them to do.’

Jemma seems to consider this, her brows furrowing with the extra effort it is taking her to think.

‘Really?’ When he nods, she huffs and lets her head slide down to fit into the crook of his neck like a missing piece. ‘That doesn’t sound like me at all.’

Against the top of her hairline, Fitz’s grin is a rubber stamp, creating something permanent.

He could quite happily have lived that moment for the rest of his life but he knows perfectly well how fast time moves and moments end, and soon he can feel Jemma’s body grow heavy with sleep and his knees start to ache beneath her.

As wonderful as the feeling of her weight might feel now, he knows that if she falls asleep on him he will be trapped for a lot longer and Fitz realises that this won’t be sensible, or comfortable, for either of them.

Reluctantly, he bends his head towards her.

‘Jemma? Can we go back to bed, please?’

She gives an incoherent mumble in response, but starts to slide off his knees anyway and Fitz stands with her to guide her back onto the bed. She doesn’t seem to want to let go of his hand and so he keeps holding it, even though it requires some fairly acrobatic movements to get her suitably tucked back up under the blankets. Once she’s there Jemma looks up at him, her eyes wide and blinking in an unspoken question, and Fitz gives her his answer just as silently as he clambers onto the narrow bed beside her, resting his head next to hers on the pillow.

Jemma’s breathing is shallow, and he can tell that it is only minutes before she falls asleep again. He shifts on the mattress, so that their bodies are perfectly aligned like the yin and the yang.

‘I really am very happy,’ Jemma whispers. On the pillow, her fingers are outstretched, reaching for his. ‘When I’m with you, I’m happy. I’m happier than I have ever been in my whole life.’

Fitz smiles, lacing their hands together.

‘Do you think that’s wrong?’

‘What?’ Frowning, he lifts himself up onto one elbow to stare down at her. Jemma’s eyes are fixed on him, following him wherever he moves. ‘Jemma…how could you ever think being happy is wrong?’

‘Because…’ She blinks up at him and behind the fog he can see a glistening of clarity in her eyes. ‘So many other people aren’t happy. How can it be fair for me to be when they aren’t?’

Fitz feels his throat close up and he reaches for her on instinct, folding her in close.

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘But – if it helps – I’m the happiest I’ve ever been too.’

Jemma’s nose is pressing into his shoulder, as cold as her fingers wrapped around his waist are, and Fitz can feel her small smile against his skin.

‘It does.’

She falls quiet after that, her breathing even and her eyes closed, and it is only the perseverance with which she is holding his hand that tells Fitz she is still conscious. Not fully awake, mind you, but still with him enough to want to keep holding on.

‘There’s just so much,’ she says quietly after a few minutes, as if their lapse into silence had never happened.

Fitz cocks his head against the pillow. ‘So much of what?’

Jemma opens her eyes again. ‘Love,’ she says, and Fitz watches the way her mouth moves when she does, softening the syllables carefully, cushioning the word. He loves the way she says it like it’s a promise. ‘There’s so much love for you inside me. It’s like I’m a jar and there’s so much inside me that I feel like I’m spilling over at the sides. There’s so much of it that I don’t think I can really see through it anymore.’

Fitz’s throat is dry and he has to lick his lips before he answers her. ‘Do you…do you think there’s _too much,_ then?’

‘No,’ Jemma says, and the force behind the word is fiercer than he’d thought her capable in this moment. ‘No, there could never be too much.’

Her eyes drift shut, like the revelation has exhausted her, and she shifts on the bed to tuck herself further into his chest. Fitz moves for her, creating the space she needs to fit beside him comfortably.

He had wondered, once they’d first gotten together, whether the novelty of going to sleep next to Jemma would ever wear off. In truth, he had been terrified that it would and that one day he would start to take for granted the feel of her in his arms and the smell of her breath on his skin. But now, with his arms wrapped lightly around her and the top of her head pressed hard underneath his chin, Fitz wants to laugh when he remembers that fear.

Falling asleep with Jemma was like watching the sunrise; you could never get tired of its beauty, because every day it felt just a little bit different.

This time, he was certain that she had fallen asleep and had been close to sleeping himself, so when he feels more than hears her whisper something barely audible into him it makes him start.

‘What?’ Fitz stirs, pushing himself out of the stupor of sleep, just in case something is wrong. ‘Are you okay? What is it?’

‘Babies,’ Jemma mumbles without opening her eyes, snuggling even further into his side with a little sigh. ‘We’d make the most beautiful babies, Fitz.’

‘Would we?’

‘Yeah. They’d have curly hair and amber eyes and they’d probably be smarter than anybody else on the planet.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sounds like they’d be pretty dangerous, if you ask me.’

Jemma chuckles, soft and breathy, and Fitz knows he is about to lose her to the throws of sleep. ‘I think,’ she manages to say, ‘that they’d be absolutely incredible.’

And then, just like that, she is asleep.

‘Yeah,’ Fitz says quietly, even though there is no danger of waking her up anymore. ‘So do I.’

He wants to kiss her, feel the impression of her lips against his and the taste of her skin, but she is so fast asleep that he has to make do with the memory of it instead and presses several feather-light kisses to the top of her head, at the place where her hair and her forehead meet. Tomorrow, he can spend hours filling the space between them with ice cream and kisses.

The last thing Fitz remembers feeling before his eyelids start to drop and he follows her into sleep is an all-encompassing, overpowering love for Jemma Simmons who, after all the things her eyes had seen, still thought he was the most important of them all.

 


End file.
